The year 2025 in politics in Kenya begins with an attempt at a throwback or, perhaps, a lifeboat thrown by former President Uhuru Kenyatta to a ship, that of the current government, which if not yet sinking, certainly has many leaks and has been taking on water and failures for some months.
The first move of the year, after the historic meeting between the two former rivals, i.e. the incumbent president William Ruto and the former leader and his president, when he was the deputy, Kenyatta, was to appoint two of his loyal allies as the new ministers of Agriculture (a sector that has always been considered strategic for Ruto, who is by the way an agronomist) and Trade and Industry, another key ministry. He is Mutahi Kagwe, known to all as the Kenyatta government's Health Minister at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, who will now have a similar, though obviously lesser, task, that of organising and carrying out the vaccination of millions of cattle, as envisaged by the government to limit the death of livestock from disease, often caused by drought and pollution of the increasingly poor watering sources. The trade ministry fell instead to Lee Kinyanjui, another Kenyatta loyalist, coordinator of his Jubilee Party and former governor of Nakuru County.
After having included in his government four opposition members of Raila Odinga's ODM party, Kenyatta's historic rival who, however, allied himself with Ruto before the 2022 elections, William Ruto now enlarges the government of broad accord even further, foreshadowing a grand coalition of power with which to continue sailing until the ship will not land in some safe harbour or, in the worst case scenario, sink. But it is very difficult, knowing Kenya's history, for this to happen before the next round of elections.
In the meantime, China has withdrawn from the race for many infrastructures, including the completion of the railway that is supposed to connect Mombasa to Uganda (for now, it is mainly the section up to Nairobi that is operational and the connection to Kisumu is still very complicated). Ruto therefore flew to the United Arab Emirates to try to convince the Arabs to take it over. 
International strategies awaiting Trump's policy, his intentions on relations with Africa after the inauguration.
Against this backdrop of a stalled economy and a shilling that is holding for now, thanks also to the dollar that is waiting for Donald, from last year's Generation Z protests, we have moved on to the problem of kidnappings and abductions of young activists, social figures and dissidents, including foreigners, that take place in Nairobi and other Kenyan cities and of which the institutions do not disclose the contours and possible perpetrators.
Public opinion, human rights organisations and part of the opposition (as well as Gen Z) point the finger at the police and the climate of terror established by government officials, while one of Ruto's ministers, former Attorney General Justin Muturi, has even blamed the Kenyan secret service, the NIS, for the kidnapping of his son Leslie, also an activist.
What is needed is not only unity, therefore, but above all clarity, to show that Kenya is still a democracy and not a regime.